Raising Worms For Castings – Part 2

In this post, Raising Worms For Castings – Part 2, we discuss how Eddie and I got passed the first worm disaster, and instead, opted for building and installing a worm tower in the garden. If you are interested in considering the bin method too, see: Raising Worms For Castings – Part 1.

To continue the story ….

While weighing the pros & cons of different methods for raising worms for castings, we came across this thing called a worm tower. I found it on Midwest Permaculture’s website. They explain to place a 2-3 foot long PVC pipe (with numerous holes drilled in it) and bury it deep (and vertically) into the middle of your garden with only the top 6 inches or so left above ground. For complete, downloadable instructions, go to this link at Midwest Permaculture, and tell them I sent you. (Pretty cool website, by the way. If you go there, explore a bit.) We read that post and thought, “This should solve all the issues — at least, in theory.” It had more pros than cons. Yes, of course, there ARE other solutions out there to consider as well. But this was the one we settled on because it seemed like a good fit for us.

Here Is How It Works

A worm tower is a permanent fixture in the middle of your garden, yet takes up less than a square foot. You deposit your kitchen scraps into the top of the pipe, along with a few hundred red wigglers (which you can get at a bait store or order online). Don’t worry, they will make plenty of babies. Then cover the top to keep out any vermin. Once in place, here is what happens.

The worms:

Come and go through the holes you drilled (and up through the bottom of the pipe)

Eat the kitchen scraps you keep dumping into the top of the pipe

Leave to run around the garden and poop which fertilizes your plants

Aerate the soil while they are at it (also good for your plants)

And, if it gets too cold for them, they can just go below the frost line

Midwest Permaculture says they remain active in the tower even in the cold, although I have not seen that for myself (yet). Now all this struck me as much simpler than a plastic bin because:

The worms are in their natural environment so you don’t need to worry about freezing them or housing them indoors during winter

You don’t need to bother adding bedding or cycling out poop and spreading it yourself because the worms excuse themselves from the table to go take care of business themselves right at the roots of your veggies (so the worms are doing the work, not you)

What more could you ask for? You just feed ’em and forget ’em. I am all over this … anything to simplify and not have to handle poop.

How To Build & Install a Worm Tower

Now, with a decision made and a plan in place, Eddie & I took on the project. Here is how it turned out. Come spring, we bought the PVC pipe, and Eddie it turned into a big vertical sieve with his drill bit. This is what that process looked like:

Dig that groovy spinning action!

Took a while and that is probably a few TOO many holes, but there you have it.

Now to dig a hole as deep as the pipe is long (almost … you need the top to be a few inches above ground).

You will need a stupidvisor so make sure you hire one as cute as this or the whole thing will just fall apart. Frankie (aka, Bump) made sure daddy got it just right.

Once deep enough, put the pipe in place, and back fill it.

Then look deep into the abyss … this is where the worms and the kitchen scraps will go.

I had a large tub of finely chopped kitchen scraps ready to go in, so I put half of it in the pipe, added 100 red wrigglers I bought at a bait store, and topped it with the rest of the scraps. Then, I poured in about a quart of water and put the lid on (improvised with a flower pot that was just the right size) to keep the vermin out. I checked on it the next day and found that 5-6″ of the scraps had already disappeared.

Later in the summer, I cut a circle out of the bottom of this pot and scrounged up an old piece of window screen. I placed the screen between the pipe & the pot and this allows me to water it (yes, it should get water) and keep the vermin out too! However, if you have racoons, possums or other large scavengers, a flower pot may not be enough to keep them out. You may need to find some other way to secure it.

What EVER Happened to The Worms We Thought We Froze …?

As Paul Harvey used to say …. “Now for the rest of the story.”

The day after we installed the worm tower, it was 50 degrees, sunny (so it felt more like 60), a slight breeze and great day to get some early spring work done outside. Eddie decided to tackle the back porch next. That is where we keep most of our garden supplies, my potting table, firewood, etc. And you know what ELSE is on that porch? Yes, three bins full of what we thought were dead worms from last fall that we never did bring inside. (If you are confused, then perhaps you are reading Part 2 first? Check out Raising Worms for Castings – Part 1).

Anyway, we had already written them off. I had even stopped feeding them and went back to using the compost tumbler exclusively. Still, if we wanted those bins back (which we did) then Eddie had to deal with them one way or another. So he dug a huge hole in which to bury them, carried the first bin out to dump it and from there he would till it in and call it a failure … er, a day. Just chalk it up. Dumped the first bin … yep, all dead. Then the second one. All dead. But on the third one, much to our delight, low and behold … we found we had not just living worms — we had big, fat, juicy, healthy, bright red wrigglers by the hundreds! THEY LIVED! Blessings for us!

I ran for my camera … had to get a picture before they disappeared into the soil. Look at these pretty babies. (If you think a newly hatched baby chicken is a pretty sight, then you will appreciate this too. Pretty babies!)

We have no idea how they survived out on the porch all winter and not getting fed. It is a mystery. We honestly spent the whole winter thinking we had failed miserably at worm farming and were delighted to see we had succeeded in spite of ourselves – quite by accident, or luck, or blessing or all of the above. Certainly not by anything that we did right.

So, what do you think of these two approaches (bins and towers)? Obviously, bins work, although I am sure it works MUCH better if you do it Stephanie’s way! But SINCE THAT DAY … we have fed the worm tower at least twice a week and the scraps just keep disappearing! The worms do indeed come to dinner every day. And there is nowhere in our garden you can dig and NOT find a couple dozen worms. And all we have to do is keep them fed and watered. No poop management required (my favorite part).

What approaches have you tried and what was your experience? Are there other better ways to feed your worms and your garden at the same time? WITHOUT the associated poop duty?

Comments

We made ours 4 ft long and left a foot of it above ground (with three foot below) but you can make it any length so long as at least some of it is going to be below the frost line (whatever that is there). And once installed, it stays there indefinitely. It a permanent installation unless you just decide you want to move it. (wasn’t sure if you meant length or time period so I answered both)

I have had amazing success planting my garden in 100% compost, all our table scraps go into the garden plus I buy bulk oatmeal to feed the worms. I turn the compost weekly and find hundreds of worms. I do water the garden all year long to help the compost process and to give moisture to the worms.

I have to say that I giggled when I read you had not fed your worms for a long period of time. I used to feed my worms weekly in my worm bins but then I forgot about them for about 1 1/2years. I must have fed them four times in that time period. Believe me not but last week I emptied the double bin and found some to transfer into the worm condo. The second one still had plenty of worms but hardly any little babies. We live in CA so temperatures are quite moderate. I made them a promise to never starve them again. I do like your tower as collecting the poop is very time consuming. I am enjoying your site, thanks!

I bought a bin kit from The Worm Factory a few years ago that explained exactly what to feed the worms (red wigglers). First, increase the surface area by chopping everything, no full heads of lettuce kids. They love; veggies, especially if they are past their prime, fruits and some peels but not citrus, starches but just make sure that there’s no fat on them. The worms also need fiber; dryer lint, shreeded paper (not too many xerox copies), egg cartons and newspaper. NO MEATS and NO FATS, EVER.

I have a four bin system. Once a month I take the bottom bin and put it on top of the upper bin for an hour in the bright sunlight to force any worms left down into the former top bin where I’ve been adding the food and fiber. Then I scrape the most wonderful mud into a bucket to mix with dirt, compost or potting soil. I rinse the former bottom bin off with a hose in the garden or on the lawn then line the bottom of the bin with wet newspaper and put it back on top of the stack as it’s now my new top bin.

I throw almost everything in there. I looked at the dryer lint and noticed lots of dog hair (we have three dogs). But there was no dog hair in the mud, just mud so dog hair is ok. All egg shells in the mud were intact so I quit putting egg shells in the top bin. Whenever fruit flies returned I’d add two inches of shredded paper to the top bin. I sweep the floors and throw that in as well. I’m amazed at how much the worms put away. We are three adults who cook at home so there are lots of veggie and fruit scraps. We also juice so the pulp gets turned into mud pretty easily.

My tale of woe is this, my wife wants the shower back that has housed these hungry babies for four years. So I was just going to empty the bins in the garden and wish them well, hoping they’d make it. But reading about the Tower Sytem is a perfect solution.

Thanks so much for the concept and the photos showing exactly what’s needed. My worms (who have survived two deadly and stinky summer ‘experiments’ thank you. They will be able to get deep enough to avoid the heat. It will be interesting to see how they fair during our flood irrigation.

Hey there, Rick! This is some wonderful information. Thank you so much for taking the time to write this up. I did not know about the dryer lint/dog hair … great tip for adding fiber. Thanks. And I am glad this idea is going to work for you. I really do love the convenience of my tower … and my soil is just beautiful! I think you will like it too! Let us know how it works out for you. –Jo

This sounds like a great idea (I found this on Pinterest). Question: can I do this in the raised beds I am having built? They will only be a foot tall and will have hardware cloth lining the bottom to keep the moles out (if they try to return). I could only make the tubes about a foot and a half tall (with 6 inches about ground), but I’m assuming the worms could still come and go as they pleased and dig deeper to get below freezing level (I live in a zone 7 so it does get below freezing for awhile in the winter). I just wouldn’t use as many worms. Would the problem be not having enough room in the tube for enough food? Could I just feed them more often? How often do you add water? I will have a drip irrigation system so the beds will be watered every day anyway…Thanks for your help!

I am not sure I would even try that, Evelyn. First, regardless of how many you start with, they will breed. They will grow their own population and it is just a matter a time. The trouble is see for them is mostly a result of the lining. If the bed is lined how can they possible go any deeper or wider? Wouldn’t the lining stop them? Their movement and population would be limited to the confines of that liner, right? So now, a growing population would soon result in OVER population and over population is never good for any colony of living things, no matter what it is. Also, with only a foot and half of depth (unless you have no frost line at all — i.e., you live in the tropics), my guess is that they will freeze to death if they cannot get passed that lining. Next, because it is a “raised bed” will have very little impact on where the frost line is. A raised bed (unless it is covered in winter) does not hold heat well. The frost line beneath it will not “shift up” by very much at all. And no, you would not have enough room for enough food. Increasing how much you feed them is not recommended either. Actually, it would be kind of pointless. They can only eat so much and they stop eating and leave the tube. So you would end up with a tube full of rotting, stinky veggies instead of castings. Like any animal, feed them only as much as they can eat and no more. I have neither tried a tower in raised bed nor read anything about it, and I am no expert … but my vote is don’t do it unless you can leave out the liner (my raised bed is not lined but I still do not have a tower there). About watering? I put a few cups of water in my tube no more than one or twice a week. If you are using daily drip irrigation, I would not put water in that tube at all unless you look in and see that it is dry. Odds are you will not. Good luck and let me know what you decide.

Thanks for the reply. Hardware cloth is actually like a 1/2 inch mesh screen that moles,etc. aren’t able to chew through (like they could with actual cloth). I don’t know why it is named that way….very misleading! So the worms would be able to come and go. I read somewhere on the internet that the red wrigglers only live in the top of the soil, since they normally feed on composting leaves, etc. that are on the surface. One lady drilled holes in the bottom of a bucket, put in some food scraps, covered it to keep out the critters and set it behind a shrub in the garden (to keep it from getting too hot). The worms came in and ate the food and left. Similar idea (but easier to move around to different parts of the garden as needed). I might give that a try….just looking for an easy way to compost with worms!

OH! I see! So I just learned something new … hardware cloth! Okay, well in that case … yes, I think you could do this. And what you read about red wigglers is correct. They do live near the top of the soil and search for compost. However, they are not impervious to freezing and when it gets cold enough, they will go down farther than normal. Which is why it is important (during winter) for your post to be deep enough. That said, the bucket idea could actually work too. Try it and let us know what happened. I love to hear back.

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Meet The Rellimes

Welcome to Homestead Chronicles. We are Jo & Eddie Rellime (rhymes with Bellamy). I (Jo) do most of the writing around here. Our homesteading adventures began in 2008 when we got married and became land owners. I started blogging about it last year (2013) and I have really enjoyed sharing all the trouble we get ourselves into - and we do get into some trouble. To learn more about who we are and what we share click here.

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